Sandcast Native American Indian Jewelry

Sandcast Native American Indian jewelry making was first introduced by Navajo silversmiths in the early days nearby 1840. The process begins by using a sandcast, or tufa stone mold, then carving the manufacture into the stone. With this mold, a piece of silver jewelry is made and may come to be the scholar template from which all other sandcast jewelry pieces of the same manufacture are produced.

Sandcast jewelry making is done by hand and is very labor intensive. The Sandcasting recipe takes the artisans about three days to make a fair sized medium bracelet.

Sandcast jewelry making was introduced by using sandstone or tufa stone. Tufa stone is created from crushed volcanic ash which is relatively soft and easier to work with than sandstone when making the carvings. However Sandstone will hold up much better, but the Tufa stone is is the selection among Silversmith because the soft stone is easier to carve.

There are many processes complex in Sandcast jewelry making before the jewelry piece is finished. The artisan starts by cutting a stone into two pieces and grist both halves until they are smooth on one side. The tufa stone is sometimes drenched in water to keep the dust to a minimum while carving. Next, vents are carved into the stone outward towards the edges of the stone so that the highly heated air from the molten silver will have an leave from being trapped in the mold, thus damaging the jewelry design. The next step involves heating the mold with a torch forming carbon on the inside of the halves preventing the silver from sticking to the mold when the halves are separated. Ultimately the mold is ready to start the silver casting.

The halves of the tufa stone are placed together with the pour channels aligned. The, artisans use a whole of methods, such as wrapping with wire, plywood board and clamps, or rubber straps tightly nearby the halves to keep them procure while pouring the molten silver.

The silver is then heated in a crucible with a torch until it is at a high temperature of 1850 degrees. Traditionally, temperature was judged by the color of the molten silver. That is still the most common recipe used by many artisans today, but now use crucibles that where the heat is digitally controlled. This increases the opening for a victorious pour. The temperature of the surface air must also be taken into consideration. If it is very cold, the silver can come to be too cool before it runs straight through the mold. When the silver is judged to be hot enough, it is poured into the mold straight through the carved channel.

The molten silver is then poured down straight through the channel and into the carved mold. Thus the piece is said to have been gravity cast. The tufa stone mold is allowed to cool and the silver piece is removed.

A tufa mold may allow some pours if the manufacture is small and relatively simple. With larger, more complex designs, one or two pours is normally all that can be made from a tufa mold before the stone breaks or the manufacture is ruined by the heat of the silver. The artisan at this point may determine that the jewelry piece obtained from the Tufa mold will be in quiz, and start the process of making molds of the more stronger Sandstone.

After the jewelry piece has cooled, polishing the fulfilled, jewelry is done in two phases. First the silver piece is polished wax and then washed to take off the excess wax. Next the jewelry piece is dry polished with buckskin or a dry cloth wheel, and finally, stones, if any, are set. Tufa and sandcasting processes are very labor intensive, taking many hours to make the mold, then carving the manufacture into the two stones, depending on the detail. The fulfilled, piece have cost the artisan many hours which must be taken into inventory in setting the price of jewelry created by the sancast jewelry making method.

Read more

The Whosie-Whatsit War - How the French and Indian War Shaped Us History

To call the French and Indian War America's "forgotten war" would be misleading, since that doesn't leave any good nicknames for the Barbary Wars, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, or the Korean War. Otherwise, the title fits; the hugely influential French and Indian war, fought in the middle of Britain, France, some Native American nations, and the colonials, is responsible for the fact that, among other things, the Us is down here and French Canada is way up there.

Up until the war started in 1754, Britain's then-small strip of North American colonies was hemmed in on all sides by the Atlantic, the French to the north and west, and the Spanish down in Florida and parts of Georgia and Alabama. In fact, more territory in what is now the Us had been claimed by France than by Britain. Imagine a French modern-day Missouri. Or Kentucky. Or Minnesota, don'tcha know. In the meantime, the Native Americans remaining in the areas had been forced to take sides - though many groups, such as the Iroquois League, made the most of the encroachment by negotiating private agreements with both parties.

The trouble all started when a dispute arose over the Ohio Valley area. In 1753, at just 21 years of age, George Washington was assigned by the British governor of Virginia to go tell the French to skedaddle. With no soldiery training or prior experience, he led his men through 500 miles of wilderness to complete his mission - only to be rebuffed by the French. Within a year, he was ordered to return to the Forks of the Ohio to build a competing British fort, only this time, he would be accompanied by Tanaghrisson, governor of the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingos of the Ohio Valley. Along the way, Washington entered into a skirmish with the French just exterior of modern-day Pittsburgh. The British won and all went swimmingly until Tanaghrisson decided to slaughter the captured French officer and his wounded soldiers during negotiations.

Thus (unofficially) began the French and Indian War, which would ultimately supervene in the British takeover of all French territory in North America. The Brits fared horribly for the first few years due to an arrogant unwillingness to align themselves with natives and an comprehensive snootiness toward their "inferior" colonial subjects. (Note to self: ranking colonial officers below British infantry is not a morale booster.) Actually, Britain's decisive victory couldn't have been achieved without the fact that Prussia happened to invade the Austrian protectorate of Saxony in 1756.

Before you start getting any wild ideas about Chaos Theory, keep in mind that Britain and France were engaged in the Seven Years' War back in Europe, and that Prussia and Austria were British and French allies, respectively. Prussia's invasion therefore forced Britain and France to commit themselves to fighting on the European mainland, giving their colonial subjects more free time to duke it out among themselves. By 1758, after Britain had done some serious rethinking of how to treat its colonials, so many eager North American soldiery had enlisted that Britain's soldiery swelled to 50,000 - which was practically equal to the whole white population of the French territories. That, plus a petite help from their ole friend smallpox, allowed the British to handily defeat its French and native rivals, winning Canada and all the land east of the Mississippi in the process.

In transfer for restoring Cuba to French-allied Spain, Britain also received the Spanish holdings in the Florida area. But agreeing to Britain's proclamation of 1763, all land west of the Appalachians was to be preserved as Native American soil. The British had hoped to stem the westward tide of colonial settlers, but instead, the proclamation just pissed everyone off. Fortunately for the colonials, the French were pretty bitter about their North American defeat, which came in great handy when the American Revolution rolled colse to just over a decade later. And thanks to George Washington's arduous wilderness training, the rest was Us history.

Read more